Hopefully, they’d complete their mission and head back to the ship without being detected, and she’d never need to worry about using a gun. That was the plan. But she’d done enough missions to know that nothing ever went according to plan.
She glanced over at Tesla. He was hanging on to his propulsion device, shoulders tense and arms pulling it too close. She wished she could tell him to ease up and save his strength for later. But she had no way to talk to him underwater, and he couldn’t surface. He’d just have to tough it out.
If only he’d had time to practice instead of puking. If only she’d had time to review the plan. This kind of mission took weeks to set up in the service, preferably with a dry run, or ten. But instead, she was executing an untested strategy designed by a civilian with only a few days’ practice and deadly stakes.
Not that different from any other day, really.
Relax and go with it, she told herself. Control your breath. Be ready when you get to the submarine. Conserve your strength and your air.
Clearly having trouble with his buoyancy control, Tesla dipped up and down like a drunken dolphin. That couldn’t be good for his seasickness. She knew she should feel sorry for him, but he should have stayed on the boat. Captain Glascoe would have been an asset at her side, not a liability. But instead, Tesla had insisted on coming along.
The range finder showed they were close, and she crossed in front of Tesla so he could see her. Then she slowed down and was relieved when he followed suit. He was a smart guy, but he wasn’t used to military ops or even working in teams.
A few minutes later, the hull of the submarine came into view. Backlit by lights from the yacht, it looked smaller than she remembered, but everything always seemed bigger when it was trying to kill you.
She cut her engine and decided to risk surfacing. She’d be a tiny black dot in a black sea with the light source in front of her. Not invisible, maybe, but practically.
A quick tug of Tesla’s sleeve. She pointed up, then at herself. He gave her the traditional thumb-and-forefinger-together OK sign.
A few kicks of her flippers later and her head broke the surface. Stars above, wind on her face. Better than being surrounded by water and blackness. She popped out her regulator and took a long breath of salt-scented fresh air, then stuck it back in and turned her attention to the yacht and the sub.
Even though the boats were sitting with most of the lights off, it was still too bright. She adjusted the gain on her night vision. Everything came into focus.
The submarine was about fifty yards away and right next to the yacht. Probably tied off, but she couldn’t tell for sure. Tiny figures carried boxes from the boat onto the deck of the submarine and down the sail. They were moving at double time.
A crane attached to the yacht was lowering a box onto the submarine deck. Figures below moved to receive it. That must be the oxygen generators Tesla had tracked online.
The drones were sure to have good pictures of it.
Now for the transponder.
She dove under to a depth of three feet. Tesla was right there waiting for her.
He held his tiny flashlight under his chin like a kid in summer camp. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the submarine. This was the part of the plan she liked the least — get a little closer and use the submarine drone to attach the transponder. Fred Mulcahy had promised the transponder would broadcast on a frequency that was almost never monitored. Unlikely the submarine would ever know the transponder was there. Or at least that’s what Fred believed.
Tesla bucked a couple of times. It took her a second to figure out what had happened. He’d puked into his regulator. Nasty. He pressed a button and purged it into the ocean with a rush of air. A swarm of tiny fish came up to eat it.
She swam back a few strokes to put space between herself and the vomit. Not that it should matter, right? The ocean was full of fish pee. Even so.
But how often had he had to purge his regulator? After all, they had limited air. If Tesla was venting his air to blow out his puke, which he had to do to keep from clogging up the system, then there might be a problem. Especially combined with the cold water, his mild panic, and the death grip he had on the DPV. All those things used up air.
She checked his dive computer. He’d used half his air. He didn’t have time to mess around with placing the transponder. He needed to go right back to the Voyager.
She tapped the dive computer and watched him look at it. His eyes widened. He must have done the math, too. After all, Tesla was good at math. She pointed to her dive computer. She still had two-thirds of her air, a nice margin of error.
She pointed back toward the Voyager. He shook his head. She pointed back to his air gauge, then made a throat-slitting gesture. Arguing in charades was a pain.
Again, he looked at the dive computer. She could see him thinking, but there was no other answer. He had to go back. If she’d run out of air, she could swim at the surface, even all the way back, but Tesla couldn’t do that.
As if he’d read her mind, he pointed to her tank, then his and flipped his hands from side to side. He was suggesting they swap tanks. Then he pointed back to Voyager and at her. As if she would swap tanks and go back, leaving him to do the most dangerous part of the job while puking sick. Even though he was the least-qualified member of this team.
Plus, his regulator had been puked in who knew how many times, and she wasn’t going to put it in her mouth. Sure, he had a spare, but he’d probably puked in that one, too.
She shook her head violently and took the transponders and the tiny submarine drone. Tesla had brought three transponders, just in case they lost two. He was usually overprepared. But not for this.
His shoulders slumped. Even with most of his face obscured by the mask and regulator, she could tell how much he hated accepting reality. He had to go back.
She clasped his shoulder and gave him a thumbs-up. She made swimming movements with one hand, then the other, and then brought them together. She hoped he knew that meant she was saying she should go back with him.
He shook his head, pointed to his chest and back to the Voyager, then pointed to her chest and forward to the Shining Pearl. He wanted her to complete the mission, and he would go back on his own.
She shook her head. She couldn’t let him go back on his own. Too dangerous. He couldn’t surface if he had an equipment failure or ran out of air. He’d just drown.
He glared at her and took a dive slate out of his pocket. She’d forgotten they had those. He wrote, I’ll go slowly. You can catch up.
She took the slate and wrote, NO! Too dangerous for you to go back alone.
He took the slate out of her hand and wrote, If transponder isn’t attached, they can’t track it. I’ll never be safe.
She wondered if that was true. Would the House of Dakkar keep sending assassins after him if he didn’t prove it had been a sub that tried to kill their prince and not him? Would the US government let him show the pictures he’d taken? Would they track the transponder? Would any of that be enough to change their mind?
Please, Tesla wrote, stay and do this for me.
He didn’t have time to stay and argue. She had to make a decision quickly.
She linked the wire-control sub to her BCD. Straight back?